Picks of Pics

Les Murray.
Poems the Size of Photographs

Here are excerpts presented in reverse order of their appearance in the book.

The Test

How good is their best?
And how good is their rest?
The first is a question to be asked of an artist.
Both are the questions to be asked of a culture.

I like how in such a short space the context widens.

The next is a two-line stanza from a poem made up of two-line stanzas entitled Portrait of a Felspar-Coloured Cat.

All her intelligence
is elegance.

Gentle reader, the comment about the cat could be one about the poems but our author is far too modest.

The humour of the next serves to ward off any turn to the metaphysical.

The Knockdown Question

Why does God not spare the innocent?

The answer to that is not in
the same world as the question
so you would shrink from me
in terror if I could answer it.

Where it all began.

Big Bang

If everything is receding
from eveything, we're only
seeing the backs of the stars.

Hope you liked the tour of the album. And if you have time read them bottom up to see how their wit first appeared to me.

And so for day 1282
17.06.2010